Constitution
Preface We the Members, in order to create an invented language, collaborate under democratic principles, convene in a friendly manner, and secure the productivity of linguistics, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Democratic Conlang. Article 1 - Standards §1. The official languages of the group are English and Esperanto. a. General conversation between members may occur in any language. b. All proposals must be written in an official language in order to be considered. c. All official notices will be in English, with translations provided upon request. §2. The official timezone of the group is Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Article 2 - Proposal Schedule §1. On Sundays, the Chair or their designee will introduce a ballot of questions. Any member may submit proposals for consideration, limited to one proposal per question. §2. Any member may submit a proposal before the end of every Tuesday. §3. Members may edit or withdraw proposals before the end of every Wednesday. §4. Thursdays shall be a group-wide holiday, known as Debate Day. Article 3 - Voting Procedure §1. The ballot will list all eligible proposals. Any member may vote. §2. Voting on the ballot occurs for a maximum of two rounds: a. The first round shall use approval voting (where members may vote for more than one proposal), beginning every Friday at 00:00 UTC. b. If the margin between the top two proposals is at least ten percent of the total number of votes cast, the top proposal enters the language. Otherwise, the second round will occur with the two highest-rated proposals. (See 3.2e for tie breakers.) c. The second round shall use plurality voting (where members may vote for only one proposal), beginning every Saturday at 00:00 UTC. d. The highest-rated proposal from the second round officially enters the language. (See 3.2e for tie breakers.) e. Ties in the first round are resolved with a 6-hour revote of the proposals that tied, using plurality voting . Revotes may repeat ad infinitum until all ties are broken. Ties in the second round are resolved with a Glass Conclave. (See 3.6) §4. On the first Friday of every odd-numbered month, there will be a protest ballot, where any member may submit a protest to amend or repeal previous proposals. a. On each protest, any member may vote “Approve” or “Disapprove”. A protest must receive at least 2⁄3 approval by participating voters for the protest to pass. b. Passing protests that conflict are resolved with a Glass Conclave. (See 3.6) §5. All ballots must remain open for at least 24 hours, but pollsters may shift the start and end times by 6 hours in either direction so long as they provide prior notice. a. A revote in the first round may delay the second round by another 6 hours. §6. A Glass Conclave requires that the members who proposals tied or protests conflict convene for 24 hours to decide on a compromise solution between their submissions. a. The Conclave must be public in view of all members, any of whom may contribute to the discussion, but the compromise solution may pass with the approval of only and all the members whose proposals tied or protests conflicted. b. If no members participate, the tie or conflict favors whichever proposal or protest was submitted first. Otherwise, should a nonempty proper subset of members not participate, the protest or proposal from nonparticipants is eliminated, and a compromise only need to be met by those who participate. c. If a compromise solution is not approved within 24 hours, the Chair or their designee may step in and decide upon the compromise solution. §7. These voting procedures shall not apply to building the vocabulary of the language. The procedure for vocabulary building may be determined by leadership at a later date. Article 4 - Conduct §1. Members are expected to treat others with open-mindedness and respect. Any form of bullying, prejudice, or harassment is prohibited. §2. Members are expected to consider the viewpoints of all groups. In order to increase visibility of all viewpoints, leadership may elevate the voices of minority groups. Societal biases, such as systemic racism or sexism, can occur unintentionally, and members are expected to respond civilly when others express concerns about such biases. §3. Members are expected to engage cohesively. Friendly disagreement on language features is encouraged. Voting factions are discouraged but not forbidden. a. Any ad hominem attacks are not acceptable. Debate the idea, not the person. b. Members will not be penalized in any way for forming or joining a faction. §4. Members are expected to engage productively. Members may not use the platform of our group to post spam or any other content which is not relevant to the group. §5. If the leadership determines that a violation of conduct has occurred, they may delete any offending messages and issue a warning to the offending member. Repeat offenses may result in a permanent ban from the group. §6. Any member may file a complaint about how the leadership is handling conduct violations; in which case, the Chair will set up a judicial panel to investigate whether the conduct violation was mishandled and, if so, recommend a new course of action. Article 5 - Membership §1. A member is a person in the Facebook group “The Democratic Conlang”. All members make, debate, campaign, and vote for proposals as equals. Any member may become part of leadership by joining the “Demlang Leadership” group. §2. Leadership consists of all members who are added to the “Demlang Leadership” group. Leadership is in charge of the administration of the group, and members in leadership may hold specific roles such as Advertiser, Pollster, Translator, or Historian. a. Advertisers are members who have volunteered to promote the group and its goals to a diverse range of individuals who may be interested in the project. b. Pollsters are members who have volunteered to assist with the scheduling, logistics, collection, and announcing of ballots and their results. c. Translators are members who have volunteered to assist with translation of official documents or notices into various languages. d. Historians are members who have volunteered to assist with the record keeping of decisions and the decision-making process. e. The hashtag #OfficialDemlang is restricted to use by leadership and may only appear when the person is authorized by the Chair to do so. f. The Chair may relieve any leader at any time if they act against the Constitution. This is considered a breach of conduct, and the relief is subject to Article 4 §6. §3. The Chair is an elected position with a term of 3 calendar months, whose duties include announcing the ballots, adding members to leadership, assigning roles to members in leadership, deleting messages that are deemed to violate the code of conduct, and deciding on whether to ban repeat offenders. a. The Chair may appoint or remove the Vice Chair, who assists the Chair with all their duties and filling in as Acting Chair during the Chair’s absence. b. The creator of the group shall be its first Chair. A month before the expiration of the Chair’s term (the first of which will be on the 30th of June), an election will be held. The new Chair takes office a month after the election (e.g. the 30th of July). c. Starting a week before the election, all members in leadership may nominate themselves for the position of Chair. The logistics of the election will be determined by all the pollsters who are not running for Chair. d. No individual may serve as the Chair for more than 4 complete terms, or an equivalent period of time, unless nobody eligible is willing to run. e. All matters not addressed in the Constitution shall be decided by the Chair. §4. All honorable Chairs, past and present, are to be set as Admins on both Facebook groups “The Democratic Conlang” and “Demlang Leadership”. All honorable Vice Chairs, past and present, are to be set as Mods on both Facebook “The Democratic Conlang” and “Demlang Leadership”, unless they are ever elected as a Chair, in which case they are to be set as Admins. a. Any admin may temporarily relieve another admin or mod for 3 days if it is believed that the admin or mod dishonorably abused their powers. Immediately afterward, the community will vote in a manner determined by the pollsters on whether the relief should remain permanent or if the individual should be regranted their previous status as admin or mod. b. Any individual who is permanently relieved is ineligible to run for Chair or Vice Chair again, regardless of how many terms they served. If their abuse was extremely serious, the Chair (or Acting Chair, in the case of a relieved Chair) may even permanently ban the individual from the “Demlang Leadership”. §5. Any leader may hold more than one position at a time except for the combination of positions of Chair and Vice Chair, which must be held by two unique people at any given time. A Vice Chair that becomes a Chair automatically vacates the Vice Chair position. Article 6 - Publication §1. As each vote concludes, the results are to be published in an updated grammar guide. §2. The historians will also keep an accurate record of the voting history on the wiki. §3. If the grammar guide or wiki fall horrendously behind, the Chair may ask for a one-week recess where no ballots will be held. This extra time will be used instead to make sure that the grammar guide and wiki remain up-to-date. §4. Published documents may be shared outside of the group so that non-members may come to learn of our language and the community that built it. Article 7 - Ratification and Amendments §1. This constitution shall be ratified by a referendum within the “Democratic Conlang” if it receives approval from at least 2⁄3 of people who participate within 48 hours. §2. Any member may propose amendments to this constitution through a post on the “Demlang Leadership” group. If they are not a member of leadership, they may ask a member of leadership to submit the amendment on their behalf. The spirit, content, and language of the amendment may discussed and be altered by the leadership and then will be voted on in a manner determined by the Pollsters. §3. Members maintain the right to petition for a change in a decision made by leadership. Should the petition receive at least 20 signatures, then the change should be put up as a ballot accessible to all members in a manner determined by the Pollsters. Leadership is then duty-bound to follow the majority decision.